Lictor Pose Conversion #6 - FTGTRon

Hey Everyone, 

Ron here with my sixth, and final, lictor pose conversion.  

For this lictor I wanted to put the emphasis on the 'preying mantis' style upper arms of the lictor.  These limbs are menacing, but I didn't see the immediate function they would perform on the battlefield.  As dangerous as they look with all the spikes, it escaped me as to what a lictor would use them for.  Would a lictor use them like clubs, batting at prey to render it unconscious?  Would the lictor use them as javelins to skewer prey?  The shape of the limb is very reminiscent of the arms of preying mantises, and I have to wonder if that was Jes Goodwin's source material for the limb.    

I did some internet research, ultimately leading me to a slow-motion youtube video about preying mantises (and then on to animals doing unrelated, but hilarious things).  You can see that video here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cch4aE3Oon0.  From the video you can see that Preying Mantises use these arms like rakes, throwing them out and over their intended target, and pulling them toward the creature's powerful mandibles.  This makes sense with the location of the tendons at the joints.  These tendons appear to be in a position to retract the arms, which makes sense if they are used to forcefully pull an enemy towards the lictor.  I imagine these limbs would be very useful for pulling a prey towards the rending claws and mouth tendrils for some up close and personal one on one time.       

To start, I cut up the legs at the joints and repositioned the legs into a low crouch, leaning the body forward to give the impression that the lictor was lunging forward.  I cut up the upper arms, outstretching them to as far as I could get without spikes interfering.  I wanted to show just how far away the lictor could be when grabbing an unsuspecting scout in the middle of the night.

I used green stuff to fill in the gaps, pinning the joints as I went.  I started with a glob of green stuff for the upper arms where I wanted the tendons, roughly shaping it and letting it dry.  I came back afterwards and added more green stuff, putting the striations into the putty to look like tendons.

 I added some green stuff tendrils to the head using my tentacle maker from green stuff industries, which I can't say enough good things about (link here: Tentacle Maker).  I finished assembly and threw on some paint.  Here are some finished shots:

Here is a quick snap of all 6 of my converted lictors posing with a bog standard Death Leaper.  If a plastic deathleaper isn't released with the next Tyranid wave, I'll likely try my hand at converting the pose on a finecast version of him as well.  Lictors are such a sweet Tyranid model, and I love that I don't have to field 6 of them in the same bog standard pose.     

You can see the other lictors I've converted up close with the following links:
Lictor 1
Lictor 2
Lictors 3-5

Thanks for taking a look.  Comments, questions, and suggestions for Tyranid models you'd like to see converted/modified are more than welcome!

-Ron